1. Freedom Won, Freedom Denied
African Americans in a Revolutionary Age
Noah DeWalt
History 2270: Introduction to Themes in History
May 6, 2013

2. 1
General Nathanael Greene, in a letter to Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke of Rhode
Island, details a British attack on the seaport town of Fulmouth and their plans to burn all the
seaport towns on the continent “that would not lay down and Deliver up their Arms, and give
Hostages for their future good Behaviour.” Greene proceeds to explain that one Captain Mowat
believes that the city of New York is also in ashes. “By these accounts we may learn what we
have to expect. I think New Port should be fortified in the best manner it can be. Doubtless the
Enemy will make an attempt to get the Stock of the Island. Provission should be made to defeat
them. Death and Desolations seems to mark their Foot Steps. Fight or be Slaves is the American
Motto; the first is by farr the most Elligable.”1 But “fight and be slaves” would be a more
suitable motto for the African Americans who fought for freedom not from Britain, but from a
life of chattel slavery.
Initially, General Greene, a Quaker, opposed slavery in principle. To an audience in
Philadelphia in 1783, he said, “Nothing can be said in [slavery’s] defense.”2 Greene made the
proposition to arm and train slaves in Georgia and South Carolina, and in exchange for their
service, they would earn their freedom. The proposition of armed slaves caused both the
Georgia and South Carolina legislatures to reject Greene’s proposal outright. South Carolina
offered to send unarmed slaves to the Continental Army as servants, provided they remain
slaves, which Green rejected as ludicrous.3
Greene’s native Rhode Island was the only state to arm slaves and promise their freedom
for serving. Historian Gerald M. Carbone notes, “Not all Rhode Island slaves were keen on the
1
Nathanael Greene to Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke, 24 October 1775, in The Papers of General Nathanael
Greene, ed. Richard K. Showman (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 142-43.
2
Terry Golway, Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006), 309.
3
Gerald M. Carbone, Nathanael Greene: A Biography of the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008), 209-10.

3. 2
idea…Slaveholders could sell them into the service at the price of ten pounds per man, where
they’d risk lives and limbs for a country that enslaved them.”4 Though Greene took the position
that slaves should be armed and able to earn their freedom through enlistment, he defended
slavery to that very same audience in Philadelphia in 1783, arguing that slaves were “as much
attached to a plantation as a man is to his family.” Postwar, Greene owed so much money to so
many that he declared to his wife, “I seem to be doomed to a life of slavery.” South Carolina
gave him the plantation Boone’s Barony and he received Mulberry Grove from Georgia. He
sought funds to purchase the slaves from the state of South Carolina and his friends in
government. His relegation to a life of financial “slavery” became very fruitful as a slaveowner.
That same Philadelphia audience heard him declare that the slaves would “not be worse but
better” under his ownership.5
Carbone, in emphasizing the contradiction between Greene’s fight for liberty and easy
transition to slaveowner, offers a telling exchange between Quaker Warner Mifflin and Greene.
Mifflin, a Philadelphian who had freed all of his slaves before the war, wrote to Greene in
objection of his slaveownership: “[A]nd as thou mentioned a hope you should fix Liberty on so
broad a basis that it would be lasting…thou said nothing respecting Black People, yet as the
Grand Struggle was for Liberty and thou took thy Commission from Congress who had in their
Declaration [of Independence] set forth in such clear terms its being the Natural right of all men
should thou after all by thy Conduct countenance slavery it would be a stigma to thy Character in
the Annals of History if the Historians of the present day should do justice in transmitting to
Posterity the transactions thereof.” Greene responded: “On the subject of slavery, nothing can be
said in its defence. The generosity of the southern states has placed an interest of this sort in my
4Carbone, Nathanael Greene: A Biography,97.
5 Golway, Washington’s General, 309-10.

4. 3
hands…They are, generally, as much attached to a plantation as a man is to his family; and to
remove them from one to another is their great punishment.” He continued to enslave hundreds
of people until his death.6
As Warner Mifflin wrote, Americans fought for a broad-based, lasting liberty from
Britain, but “said nothing respecting Black People,” a full fifth of the population of the nation at
the time. Like Greene, America functioned under a paradox. Historian Edmund S. Morgan
argued in “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox” that “the rise of liberty and equality in this
country was accompanied by the rise of slavery.”7 And so it was. Like Greene, American
leaders were relatively comfortable with the inconsistency in justice between the races – between
the free whites and the bondsmen and free blacks – insofar as that inconsistency in justice turned
a profit. All men were not created equal in this America. The tide of liberty that at first included
African Americans in its scope would be that same tide that washed over them, drowning them,
and perpetuating the “peculiar institution” of slavery. The freedom from British rule won by the
Americans in the Revolutionary War was won at the expense of a full fifth of the population –
African Americans – who would be forced to wait many more decades before emancipation
would become a reality.
Many hundreds of slaves were yearning for freedom from bondage at the start of the
Revolution, and enlistment offered them that chance. Military officers like Major-General
Edward Hand were always pleased to receive letters from civilians declaring themselves ready
for duty. In one such letter, a civilian declared himself “ever ready under your honors command
to fight against all Enemys of the Honble. United States in defense of Liberty and the Rights of
6 Carbone, Nathanael Greene: A Biography,218-19.
7 Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” in Africans Become Afro-Americans:
Selected Articles on Slavery in the American Colonies,ed. Peter Charles Hoffer (New York: Garland
Publishing,1988), 159.

5. 4
Mankind.”8 This civilian, however, was a slave seeking not freedom from Britain, but freedom
from bondage. One John Laurens sought to offer him that opportunity. Laurens’s time spent in
Geneva and his study of Rousseau’s recently published Du contrat social made him a fierce
opponent to slavery in the South Carolina of the 1770s. Benjamin Quarles said on Laurens: “no
man believed more in arming the slaves and no man had done more to bring it about than this
devoted patriot.”9 Laurens believed, and rightfully so, that arming roughly one-fifth of all able-
bodied males (slaves) on the Patriot side would give the Americans a definite advantage against
Britain. From the very onset of the Revolution, Laurens proposed emancipating slaves for their
enlistment, writing: “It is a pity that some such plan as I propose could not be more extensively
executed by public authority. A well chosen body of 5,000 black men, properly officer’d to act
as light troops…might give us decisive success in the next campaign.”10 Laurens’s proposal to
enlist slaves would make its way all the way to the Continental Congress.
After deliberation and much concern over armed slaves, the Continental Congress
concluded in March 1779 that “a force might be raised in [South Carolina] from among the
Negroes, which would not only be formidable to the enemy from their numbers, and the
discipline of which they would very readily admit, but would also lessen the danger from revolts
and desertions, by detaching the most vigorous and enterprising from among the Negroes.”11
Black enlistment was not being urged out of sheer concern for emancipation, either. American
forces were becoming more and more concerned that the British, who African Americans did not
view as their direct oppressors, would be able to tempt large numbers of slaves into the Loyalist
8 The Unpublished Revolutionary Papersof Major-General Edward Hand of Pennsylvania:1777-1784 (New York,
1907), 30.
9 Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1996), 60-61.
10 John Laurens to Henry Laurens, 2 February 1778, in The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens, with a
Memoir, ed. William Gilmore Simms (New York, 1907), 117.
11 Journalsof the Continental Congress,1774-1789 (Washington:Government Printing Office, 1909), 13:386.

6. 5
camp with an offer of freedom after the war. Black enlistment was becoming crucial to
American victory. Alexander Hamilton, in a letter to the first president of the Continental
Congress John Jay, argued: “If we do not make use of [blacks] in this way, the enemy probably
will; and the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them
ourselves.” Hamilton fully understood what obstacles would stand in the way of black
enlistment: “The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many
things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with
property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or
pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such sacrifices.”12 Though Laurens and
Hamilton exerted much effort to see black troops become a reality, South Carolina rejected the
“black levy” outright.13
Laurens and Hamilton communicated with fervor during this period. Laurens wrote
Hamilton on July 14, 1779 on South Carolina’s treacherous decision: “It appears to me that I shd
be inexcusable in the light of a Citizen if I did not continue my utmost efforts for carrying the
plan of black levies into execution, while there remains the smallest hope of success.”14
Laurens’s idealism was met with Hamilton’s brutal realism: “I think your black scheme would be
the best resource the situation of your country would admit – I wish its success – but my hopes
are very feeble. Prejudice and private interest will be antagonists far too powerful for public
spirit and public good.”15 His last line perhaps speaks volumes about the situation in which the
enslaved find themselves, and on an even greater scale, in which the country finds itself.
12 Alexander Hamilton to John Jay, 14 March 1779, in The Works of Alexander Hamilton, 9:161.
13 Alan Gilbert, Black Patriotsand Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2012), 92.
14 John Laurens to Alexander Hamilton, 14 July 1779, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 2:102, 103.
15 Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, September 1779, Papers of Henry Laurens/John Laurens.

7. 6
Hamilton eventually abandoned his position on slavery, though he fought for gradual
emancipation in New York in 1799.16 Though Laurens’s vision did not come to pass in South
Carolina, states like Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania to the north
were already enlisting black troops, who served as a symbol for emancipation. Some Patriot
soldiers were slaves, as a result of white citizens presenting their slaves to serve in their stead.
These slaves often ended up earning their freedom as a result of their masters’ lack of
patriotism.17 Whether they were freed or not, however, African American soldiers were fighting
in a war for freedom – a freedom that they would not, as a larger community be able to enjoy for
many years to come.
The Declaration of Independence was quite clear in regards to which citizens were
created equal, and which were not: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” All men are endowed by their creator with
rights, among them liberty. A large part of this inconsistency in application of liberty stems from
either a sheer hypocrisy or a willful ignorance. In an original rough draft of the Declaration of
Independence, Thomas Jefferson writes to King George III in June of 1776: “[H]e has waged
cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in
another hemisphere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation thither.” Thomas
Jefferson, a slaveowner himself, continues, “This piratical warfare…is the warfare of the
Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought
& sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to
16 Gilbert, Black Patriotsand Loyalists, 93.
17 Gilbert, Black Patriotsand Loyalists, 95.

8. 7
restrain this execrable commerce and…he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms
among us, and to purchase the liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people
upon whom he also obtruded them: this paying off former crimes committed against the liberties
of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.” The
Continental Congress rejected this version, editing the final version to proclaim only that the
king “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”18
The Continental Congress had no choice but to reject this revisionist historical account.
Yes, the British were slave traders, but Jefferson, a slaveowner himself, and his American
counterparts were not innocent in this “cruel war against human nature”; they were perpetuating
it. Key in this original draft of the Declaration of Independence is Jefferson’s claim that the king
is exciting slaves to rise against the Americans “and to purchase the liberty of which he has
deprived them.” Slaves had been denied freedom by the king and by Jefferson, and they had a
different story to tell.
The first African Americans arrived to the New World as the slaves of Spanish explorers
in the 1500s – a full century before Jamestown.19 Around the time of the Revolution, after over
two centuries of slavery, African Americans like Phillis Wheatley began to invoke the same
natural rights principles as the revolutionaries. In her letter to Samson Occom, a Mohegan
Indian who had become a Presbyterian minister, she brings to the forefront the “strange
Absurdity” of white protests for liberty at a time of black enslavement. Wheatley writes, “In
every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is
impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I
18 Thomas Jefferson, Original Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776), in Black Americans in the
Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with Documents, ed. Woody Holton (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 55-
56.
19 Woody Holton, introduction to Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with Documents
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 2.

9. 8
will assert, that the same Principle lives in us.” After declaring her humanity, she ends on a
pointed note: “How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the exercise of
oppressive Power over others agree – I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of a
Philosopher to determine.”20
Ferdinando Fairfax, a Virginia planter and slaveowner, believed that, as Wheatley
pointed out, the cry for liberty and the exercise of oppressive power over others did not agree.
Fairfax published his “Plan for Liberating the Negroes within the United States,” the first
detailed plan of its kind, in Philadelphia in late 1790. But the Fairfax plan was not a proposed
humanitarian effort and Fairfax expressed no urgency, writing: “It seems to be the general
opinion, that emancipation must be gradual; since, to deprive a man, at once, of all his right in
the property of his negroes, would be the height of injustice, and such as, in this country would
never be submitted to: and the resources of government are by no means adequate to making at
once a full compensation.” Fairfax further argued that “There is something very repugnant to the
general feelings, even in the thought of their being allowed that free intercourse, and the
privilege of intermarriage with the white inhabitants.” His solution was an African colony to
remove them “to a distance from this country.” Fairfax took a logistical approach, however
racist and inhumane. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, he did not believe that freedom and slavery
could coexist.21
And though many of the founding fathers believed on a certain level that freedom and
slavery could coexist, they were not necessarily steadfast proponents of slavery, and struggled
with the issue, if only in a minor way. Historian Duncan J. MacLeod notes that, before the end
20 Phillis Wheatley, Letter to Samson Occom (1774), in Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History
with Documents, ed. Woody Holton (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 50-51.
21 Ferdinando Fairfax, Plan for Liberating the Negroes within the United States (1790), in Race and Revolution,ed.
Gary B. Nash (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990), 146-50.

10. 9
of the Revolutionary War, George Washington gave no indication that he doubted African
American slavery as a policy. Although he was tempted to sell his slaves in 1778-79, he was
motivated purely by economic factors: “an investment in lands or loan certificates seemed to
promise a better and less troublesome economic return.” In 1783, however, in a letter from
Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, Washington exhibited a principled objection to the
institution of slavery and actually agreed to join the marquis’s emancipation project at a later
date. But years later, Washington made it clear that he wanted to see a slow, imperceptible
abolition that would do as little harm as possible to planters, regardless of the harm done to
slaves. Washington did eventually attempt to free his slaves in his will. MacLeod notes:
“Washington’s progression from a willingness to invest heavily in slaves, even to the extent of
incurring large debts in the process, to a desire to abolish slavery certainly owes much to his
experience in the Revolutionary War and as President.”22
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, two Virginian founding fathers, claimed to
despise slavery, but refused to even step forward to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1785 and
support the Methodist petitions praying for gradual abolition.23 George Washington declined to
support them unless the legislature would consider them, which they would not.24 The
revolutionary ideology and principles of freedom, justice, and equality must have influenced
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, but not enough to put the weight of their names in favor of
abolition. According to many of the founding fathers, slavery was not anti-American or an
absolute evil. There were, however, Americans – a Founding Father included – who believed
22 Duncan J. MacLeod, Slavery, Race and the American Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974),
131.
23 Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 37.
24 Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 36.

11. 10
that the God of Christianity and the American political creed stood steadfastly on the side of the
abolitionists.
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was founded at the dawn of the Revolution and had
the distinction of being the first antislavery society in the western world. Quakers founded the
society, which worked to end the slave trade abroad, to abolish slavery here, and to assist
emancipated slaves in their new lives as freedmen. The society petitioned Congress in February
of 1790. The petition made it clear to Congress that “many important and salutary Powers are
vested in you for ‘promoting the Welfare & securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the
United States.’ And as they conceive, that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered,
without distinction of Colour, to all descriptions of People.” Franklin proceeds to describe the
great contradiction between the “Joy of…Freemen” and the “Servile Subjection” of the
bondsmen, and requests that Congress remove once and for all this “Inconsistency from the
Character of the American People.” Of course, Congress would fail to act on the petition. In
fact, the Constitution itself prohibited the ban of the slave trade before 1808.25
At the end of the war, the victorious Americans and the defeated British signed the Treaty
of Paris. Although America was now a free country, those emancipated slaves who fought for
the British were summoned back in chains: “And his Britannic Majesty shall, with all convenient
speed and without causing any Destruction or carrying away any Negroes or other Property of
the American Inhabitants withdraw all his Armies, Garrisons, and Fleets from the said United
States.”26 British commander Guy Carleton officially ordered ship captains to not violate this
part of the treaty, though “as a matter of honor, Carleton himself countermanded it.” While
meeting with Washington, Carleton informed him that many black troops had departed for
25 Benjamin Franklin, Petition from Pennsylvania Abolition Society to Congress (1790), in Race and Revolution,ed.
Gary B. Nash (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990), 144-45.
26 “Treaty of Paris,” September 3, 1783, Book of Negroes art. 7.

12. 11
Canada. Washington was shocked. The article in the treaty, declared Carleton, was
“inconsistent with prior [promises] binding the National Honor which must be kept with all
colors.” The Crown must maintain its “Faith to the Negroes who came into the British lines.”
Gilbert notes that the British were true to their commitment of emancipation for black soldiers,
even in defeat.27
On the American side, not all black soldiers who fought for freedom and who were
promised emancipation were freed. It was often up to the discretion of their masters. In
Virginia, only free men could enlist. Some masters substituted their slaves, unbeknownst to the
authorities that they were not free, and promised them their freedom. When their enlistment
terms expired, they attempted to reclaim their property.28 In this instance, when Governor
Harrison of Virginia discovered this, he proposed to “Lay the matter before the Assembly, not
doubting but they will pass an act giving to those unhappy creatures that liberty which they have
been in some measure instrumental in securing to us.” Harrison’s will was done and the slaves
were emancipated.29 But this is not indication that Virginia was the territory of abolitionists.
Historian Benjamin Quarles indicates that not only did the state of Virginia sell the slaves of
loyalists, but also sold the public slaves owned by the state which they had purchased for service
in the wartime industries. Georgia and South Carolina treated the slaves of loyalists in their
respective states similarly, auctioning them off as public property or putting them to work even
before the British surrendered.30
Historian Alan Gilbert in Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the
War for Independence, presents the American Revolution as two revolutions, being fought side
27 Gilbert, Black Patriotsand Loyalists, 177-78.
28 Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution,183.
29 Harrison to Charles Dabney,7 October 1783, in The Writings of Jefferson, 6:430-31.
30 Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution,185.

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by side – The (largely white) revolution fought for American freedom from Britain, and the
black revolution fought for emancipation from their white masters. After Yorktown, one
revolution is over, but the other is not. Gilbert claims, “at no time more sharply than in victory
was the first revolution pitted against the second.”31 This was in large part due to the fact that the
Americans now had a chance to exercise their principles of freedom and liberty and justice, but
black veterans would not often receive the respect due them. Free blacks were now a permanent
legacy of the Revolution, but clearly separate and unequal.
In Virginia, for instance, a 1793 law required all African Americans to register with the
town clerk’s office every three years. Their age, color, and status were all recorded. Employers
of free blacks could face penalties – and the black employees themselves could go to jail – if
they were not able to present a certificate of registration. The state of Georgia began requiring
annual registration of free blacks in 1818. The published registration lists were open to
objection. If the case were presented before a justice of the peace, a ruling against the freedman
could mean re-enslavement. A North Carolina statute in 1785 required free blacks not only to
register, but also to wear a cloth badge reading ‘FREE,’ reminiscent of the various badges that
minorities in fascist Germany were required to affix to their sleeves. Similar laws in apartheid
South Africa clearly indicate that this is a particularly shameful episode in American history.32
And these are just a few examples of the freedom that African Americans at this time faced – a
partial, nominal freedom that kept them separate and unequal, second-class citizens.
Not only was outright abolition seeming virtually impossible post-Revolution, but the
private freeing of slaves, made legal in Virginia in 1782 on the tide of freedom washing over the
nation, was prohibited. The Virginia Manumission Law of 1782 empowered private citizens to
31 Gilbert, Black Patriotsand Loyalists, 177.
32 MacLeod, Slavery,Race and the American Revolution,164-65.

14. 13
free their slaves, and thousands were liberated. The law went so far as to require that freed
slaves be “supported and maintained by the person so liberating them.”33 This law was partially
inspired by revolutionary principles, but a study concluded that Quaker lobbying was
“apparently responsible” for the statute. Another study went even further, concluding that the
statute was more “an acknowledgment of the religious rights of whites than of the natural rights
of blacks.”34 In other words, even the abolition efforts of the era were more about indulging the
moral sensibilities of whites than focused on the human rights of the enslaved, which serves as
further evidence that the freedom of this era was earned at the expense of African Americans.
The Virginia legislature later reneged on this small step toward freedom.
Citizens of Halifax County petitioned the Virginia General Assembly in 1785 to repeal
the Manumission Law of 1782. These citizens declare that “When the British Parliament
usurped a Right to dispose of our Property without our Consent, we dissolved the Union with our
Parent Country, & established a Constitution and Form of Government of our own, that our
Property might be secure in Future.” They fought for this, and they won their “Rights of Liberty
and Property…But notwithstanding this, we understand, a very subtle and daring Attempt is on
Foot to deprive us of a very important Part of our Property. An Attempt carried on by the
Enemies of our Country, Tools of the British Administration, and supported by a Number of
deluded Men among us, to wrest from us our Slaves by an Act of the Legislature for a general
Emancipation of them.” They go on to describe these emancipators as having a “Veil of Piety
and Liberality of Sentiment” and claim that their actions are “unsupported by the Word of God.”
In a statement of absurdity, these citizens claim that this law is “ruinous to Individuals & to the
33 Virginia Manumission Law of 1782, in Race and Revolution,ed.Gary B. Nash (Madison, WI: Madison House,
1990), 115-16.
34 George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’Union: Slavery, Politics,and the Constitution in the Early American
Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,2010), 95.

15. 14
Public. For it involves in it, and is productive of Want, Poverty, Distress, and Ruin to the Free
Citizen; Neglect, Famine, and Death to the helpless black Infant & superannuated Parent; the
Horrors of all the Rapes, Murders, and Outrages, which a vast Multitude of unprincipled,
unpropertied, vindictive, and remorseless Banditti are capable of perpetrating…and lastly Ruin
to this now free and flourishing Country.” The citizens of Halifax County fail to recognize the
“Want, Poverty, Distress, and Ruin” of the slave in chattel slavery, make a patronizing remark
that only white slaveholders could care for the very young and very old African Americans
properly, assume that, were slaves to be freed, they would naturally become rapists and
murderous “Banditti.” In the final remark, and a statement that echoes the irony and
inconsistency in many of the statements of the leaders of this day, these citizens claim that the
manumission of slaves would destroy “this now free and flourishing Country.”35
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention considered the issue. Many Northern
delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 believed that slavery would disappear
whether they took legislative action or not. The inclusion of the 1808 abolition of the slave trade
into the document satisfied the Northern delegates, believing they had dealt slavery a deadly
blow, though nothing addressed slaves already here.36 Three former slaves wrote to the
Hampshire Gazette in 1788, voicing their dissent to the new Constitution. The men write, “The
advocates for the constitution seemed to suppose, that this restriction being laid upon Congress
only for a term of time…is ‘a glorious acquisition towards the final abolition of slavery.’” The
men ask, “But how much more glorious would the acquisition have been, was such abolition to
35 Petition to the Virginia General Assembly (1785), in Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History
with Documents, ed. Woody Holton (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 90-92.
36 Matthew Mason,Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North
Carolina Press, 2006), 15.

16. 15
take place the first moment the constitution should be established.” They proceed to note that
abolition is still “wholly optional with the Congress.”37
The men then go on to address “the weight of names” – the influence that powerful men
had over other signers of the Constitution. They note, “It was urged that the gentlemen who
composed the federal Convention, were men of the greatest abilities, integrity and erudition, and
had been the greatest contenders for freedom. We suppose it to be true, and that they have
exemplified it, by the manner in which they have earnestly dogmatized for liberty – But
notwithstanding we could not view this argument, as advancing any where towards infallibility –
because long before we entered upon the business of the Convention, we were by some means or
other possessed with a notion (and we think from good authority) that “great men are not always
wise.” That “good authority” these men mentioned was the Holy Bible, Book of Job 32:9. The
men continued, writing, “To be sure the weight of a name adduced to give efficacy to a measure
where liberty is in dispute, cannot be so likely to have its intended effect, when the person
designed by that name, at the same time he is brandishing his sword, in the behalf of freedom for
himself – is likewise tyrannizing over two or three hundred miserable Africans, as free born as
himself.” Bold statements lace the letter, but the men end saying that they will obey the
Constitution “wherever [their] lot may be cast.”38 These men thought the founding principles
were clear, but were met with opposition.
Abolitionists and pro-slavery forces operated under the same founding documents, but
came to very different conclusions. The Declaration of Independence was quite clear in regards
to which citizens were created equal, and which were not: “We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
37 Consider Arms, Malichi Maynard,and Samuel Field, Reasons for Dissent to the Federal Constitution (1788), in
Race and Revolution,ed. Gary B. Nash (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990), 138.
38 Arms, Maynard, and Field, Reasons for Dissent in Race and Revolution,ed. Nash, 141.

17. 16
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The
Declaration of Independence declared that all men are created equal, but the word “men” is a
point of contention in this quotation. Some whites of this period were abolitionists, but many
more believed blacks to be inferior in character, intelligence, and moral fiber to whites, and some
even believed blacks to be subhuman, which, in their eyes, clearly justified the discrepancy in
treatment and in failing to recognize blacks’ humanity. Anatomists of the time strongly implied
that sexual aggression was part of the character of the black male, and that he had rapist
tendencies at times of great stress, such as slave insurrection. The black female was also viewed
as “wanton and immoral.”39
Historian Duncan J. MacLeod claims that “Most forms of discrimination emanated from
the central institution of slavery, in which blacks were set apart as slaves.”40 It’s unclear whether
racism against blacks preceded slavery, or whether the slave trade fostered racism, or perhaps
both. Winthrop D. Jordan writes: “Slavery was at bottom a social arrangement, a way of
society’s ordering its members in its own mind.”41 But even outside of slavery, free blacks faced
much discrimination. Free blacks were prohibited to enter many states. In North Carolina in
1826, the legislature declared free black immigration unlawful, even though there were clearly
constitutional questions about its legality. Free black veterans were not, first and foremost,
considered patriotic soldiers. They faced the same degrading treatment as any other free black.42
Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson serves as a once-and-
for-all refute to black inferiority. Thomas Jefferson made extraordinary claims about African
Americans in Notes on the State of Virginia. He claims that blacks have made their “own
39 MacLeod, Slavery,Race and the American Revolution,158.
40 MacLeod, Slavery,Race and the American Revolution,162.
41 Winthrop D. Jordan, “Modern Tensions and the Origins of American Slavery,” Journal of Southern History 28
(1962): 30.
42 MacLeod, Slavery,Race and the American Revolution,162-63.

18. 17
judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the
preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species.” This one line
by a founding father is clearly dehumanizing, and further proof that this Revolution was won at
the expense of African Americans, using them for economic and military gain. In a white, self-
aggrandizing, black dehumanizing follow-up, he asks: “The circumstance of superior beauty, is
thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why
not in that of man?”43 These statements, and many, many more, caused Baltimore
mathematician, astronomer, surveyor, and free black, Benjamin Banneker, to write Mr. Jefferson
and send him a copy of the manuscript for his soon-to-be-published Almanac.44
Banneker unflinchingly reaffirmed his manhood and on Jefferson’s writings, he said, “I
apprehend you will embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas
and opinions, which so generally prevails, with respect to us; and that your sentiments are
concurrent with mine, which are, that one universal Father hath given being to us all;
and…without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same
faculties.” He goes on to affirm that black men and white men would be capable of the same
feats were it not for situational differences caused by “the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of
men.” Banneker then masterfully compares the captivity of black men to the former captivity of
America: “Sir, suffer me to recal to your mind that time, in which the arms and tyranny of the
British crown were exerted, with every powerful effort, in order to reduce you to a state of
servitude: look back…on that time, in which every human aid appeared unavailable, aid in which
even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict…This, Sir, was a time when
you clearly saw into the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions
43 Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), in The Founders’ Constitution,ed.Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 137-43.
44 Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison,WI: Madison House Publishers, 1990), 177.

19. 18
of the horrors of its condition.” Banneker then proceeds to explain why he sent the copy of his
Almanac: “This calculation is the production of my arduous study, in this my advanced stage of
life; for having long had unbounded desires to become acquainted with the secrets of nature, I
have had to gratify my curiosity herein, through my own assiduous application to Astronomical
Study, in which I need not recount to you the many difficulties and disadvantages, which I have
had to encounter.” Banneker sent a copy of the manuscript of his astronomical studies to
someone who considered himself his intellectual superior, in hopes that he would understand that
race does not determine intellect.45
Jefferson seemed to be receptive to Banneker’s letter. “No body wishes more than I do to
see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those
of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the
degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America…I have taken the liberty of
sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris,
and member of the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which your
whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of
them.” Banneker achieved the recognition he deserved, but more importantly to him, his “black
brethren” were beginning to be accepted as human beings, in both America and Europe, but still
far from achieving equality.46 The Georgetown Weekly Ledger, in an article on Banneker’s
arrival to Washington as part of the team surveying the federal capital, described him as “an
45 Benjamin Banneker, A Letter from Benjamin Banneker to the Secretary of State (1792), in Race and Revolution,
ed. Gary B. Nash (Madison,WI: Madison House, 1990), 177-81.
46 Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker, 30 August 1791, Library of Congress,accessed May 5, 2013,
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/79.html.

20. 19
Ethiopian whose abilities as surveyor and astronomer already prove that Mr. Jefferson’s
concluding that the race of men were void of mental endowment was without foundation.”47
Historian Gary B. Nash wonders what caused the founding fathers to become risk averse
on the matter of slavery and reflects on the real possibility of abolition at the time of Revolution:
“If Washington had carried through with his pledge in 1783 to join Lafayette in “the grand
experiment” of freeing their slaves, if Jefferson, Madison, and a few other luminous Virginians
who professed to despise slavery had stepped forward to support the Methodists’ appeal to the
Virginia legislature in 1785, or to follow the example of Robert Carter III and Richard Randolph
in emancipating their slaves, or to endorse or improve one of the gradual emancipation plans put
forward by Virginia’s most eminent jurists, and if northern leaders such as John Adams and
Benjamin Franklin had drawn fully on their fund of respect to support a plan for gradual
emancipation and convince northerners of their obligation to contribute to its implementation for
the sake of an enduring union, the course of history might have changed.”48
Historian Bernard Bailyn writes about the “extraordinary generation” of founding fathers,
“one of the most creative groups in modern history.” Their plans were “extraordinary flights of
creative imagination – political heresies at the time, utopian fantasies.”49 There were black
founding fathers, too, though, Nash argued. The black founding fathers of this age found
themselves in a very different situation – many years of unending work without pay, little
education, cruel treatment, illiteracy, and a government and a people working against their best
interests. This is where African Americans are situated toward the end of the revolutionary era.50
47 12 March 1791 in Georgetown Weekly Ledger.
48 Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press,2006), 121.
49 Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The genius and Ambiguities of the Founding Fathers (New York:
Knopf, 2003), 5, 35-36.
50 Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 48-50.

21. 20
In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu writes on slaves: “It is impossible for us to
suppose these creatures to be men, because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would arise
that we ourselves are not Christians.”51 Many of the founders surely feared this to be the case.
The freedom that Americans won from Britain in the Revolutionary War was freedom denied to
a fifth of the population in bondage – black slaves. There were two revolutions, as Alan Gilbert
claimed. One revolution ended long ago, and Americans gained their freedom from the British
Crown. One revolution still continues, hundreds of years later, but not everyone in the
revolution for African American equality, dignity, and humanity has been able to achieve these.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote: “the appearance of a want of [talents equal to those of the other
colours of men] is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa &
America.” Essentially, blacks are not equal to us because we make sure they are unequal. The
story of black history is ultimately a victorious one. It is important to be familiar with the
conditions in which black history began, especially black revolutionary history. It is important to
recognize that the Civil War was fought over slavery, and in this revolutionary time, that war
could have feasibly been avoided by a few courageous and charismatic white leaders who
supported abolition.
In an original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson,
slaveowner, offered a revisionist historical account. On the King of Britain he accused: “[H]e
has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty
in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation thither.”
Jefferson never indicated who was buying these “distant people.” Only who was at fault for
51 Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. and trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller,
and Harold Samuel Stone (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 121.

22. 21
transporting them. This is why historical facts are important, and a discerning eye when
evaluating primary sources such as this. Revisionist history may be more convenient and easier
to comprehend, but acknowledging that our freedom as a majority white nation was won at the
expense of a largely enslaved black minority, and that our strength as a nation today is due in no
small part to the toil – on the battlefields and in the fields – of our black brothers and sisters is
essential in order for us to move forward as one nation.